


Into the Fire

by Howlingdawn



Series: Whumptober 2020 [13]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Crew as Family, Despair, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Whumptober 2020, whump and techno talk ripped straight from voyager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27039202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howlingdawn/pseuds/Howlingdawn
Summary: The last six months had been an endless war, leaving them fighting battle after battle, never getting a chance to rest. They had been living two seconds away from disaster the entire time, powered by luck, surviving on a whim and a prayer.Someone plunging headlong into a blazing fire to save the others was bound to happen sooner rather than later.(Whumptober Days 13 & 14 - Oxygen Mask & Fire)
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Crew of the Starship Enterprise, James T. Kirk & Spock
Series: Whumptober 2020 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949191
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Into the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Took this straight from Year of Hell Part 2 bc 1) mood, and 2) I had a crappy couple of days (today was good tho! Discovery came back!! Castiel came back!! Yay!!) and I just needed to get something written to start catching up on Whumptober

Jim sprinted through the charred wreckage of his ship’s once-pristine corridors, the dim red emergency lighting casting its shadow over whatever white was left after the endless struggles of the last six months. Operating such a large ship on a skeleton crew, he could barely remember how it felt to not be running to fix something, to stave off whatever disaster was coming at them next.

He flipped open his communicator, forcing his words out of lungs and a throat already aching from too much smoke inhalation. “How we doing on time, Spock?”

_“Not well, Captain,”_ he replied. _“The micro-meteoroids will begin irreparably eroding the hull in thirty seconds.”_

“Good thing I’m almost there, then.”

He careened around the final corner, all but slamming into the door to the deflector control room. When it didn’t open automatically – what doors on this ship did these days? – he grabbed the emergency hand actuator he’d brought and hauled it open manually.

Flames roared out to greet him.

He leapt back with a shout, smacking at a burning piece of his sleeve.

_“Captain?”_

“The damn room’s on fire!” Jim yelled, shrinking back and coughing into his elbow. “Can you get fire suppression online in there?”

_“Negative, Captain.”_

Even over the comms, there was a very distinct shadow in Spock’s voice that Jim didn’t like one bit. “Spock, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were worried about me.”

For once, Spock didn’t respond.

And he didn’t need to.

The last six months had been an endless war, leaving them fighting battle after battle, never getting a chance to rest. They had been living two seconds away from disaster the entire time, powered by luck, surviving on a whim and a prayer.

Someone plunging headlong into a blazing fire to save the others was bound to happen sooner rather than later.

“I’m going in.”

He snapped the communicator shut before anyone could protest. Picking up a broken chunk of ceiling shaped vaguely like a shield, he held it before him and took a deep, ragged breath, staring down the flames.

_At least death is slightly less certain here than crawling into the warp core._

_Assuming I’m fast enough, anyway._

With that cheerful thought fueling his movements, he plunged into the flames.

\-----

“Micro-meteoroid density is increasing,” Chekov called.

“The nacelle pylon is buckling,” Sulu reported.

Sitting in the captain’s chair – Jim’s chair – Spock could only absorb the worsening news in silence, watching the storm of micro-meteoroids through the fractured viewscreen, listening to them pounding the battered, defenseless hull. He had little to offer – the crew knew their orders, and if the deflector remained offline, there were no more shuttles or escape pods, and no planet within transport range. Their lives hinged solely on Jim making it through the fire.

Even he could feel the quite palpable tension in the air.

Nyota came up beside him, gripping his shoulder to steady them both. “He’ll make it,” she said quietly. “He always does.”

“The captain’s accessed manual control,” Sulu said. “He’s stabilizing the particle emitters.”

“Ze deflector’s back online,” Chekov finished, hands racing across his console. “Actiwating deflector field!”

Beside him, Nyota let out a breath as the ship stabilized, but her grip on his shoulder only tightened.

Spock leaned over the chair’s comm, summoning every ounce of control he had ever been taught, but he still couldn’t bring himself to utilize the mask of formality. “Jim?”

Only silence answered him.

“Jim!”

He was up and running before he could stop himself, Nyota running to her station to call Leonard.

\-----

“Am I alive?” Jim rasped.

He certainly _felt_ alive. At least, he hoped that dying – or rather staying dead, he supposed – wouldn’t hurt this much. Or smell like medbay. Especially not a medbay as charred and damaged as the rest of the ship.

“You are.”

_Well, that wasn’t the voice I was expecting._

Cracking open his eyes, lifting a heavy hand to pull the oxygen mask down, he said, “I thought I was gonna wake up to a lecture.”

“I gave McCoy orders elsewhere,” Spock said, setting down his cracked PADD. “You should leave the mask on.”

Jim replaced the mask, aiming a sulking look at the Vulcan even as he gratefully inhaled a slightly easier breath. “How bad?”

“You suffered third-degree burns over approximately sixty percent of your body,” Spock answered quietly. “McCoy healed many of them, but without a dermal regenerator, some scarring was unavoidable.”

Jim closed his eyes, resisting the urge to look for the damage. “Well,” he said, swallowing down a cough, “at least we made it.”

“For now,” Spock said direly. “You are fortunate the doctor and I reached you when we did.”

For once, no joking or optimistic rebuttal came to Jim. He was just tired, hurting, struggling to breathe, and rapidly losing any faith that any of this would end well.

As Spock resumed his work, he just let himself drift off, seeking the meager peace of another hour of sleep.

Another hour, that was, if he was lucky.

_And when have we ever been lucky lately?_


End file.
